Doha, Qatar, March 7, 2018 – Lombardo Ontiveros will be forgiven if he has mixed feelings should he and Juan Virgen progress further in the 4-Star KATARA Beach Volleyball Cup that the pair are currently competing in.
On the one hand the Mexican duo will want to add to their FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour medal collection, but on the other Ontiveros will be wanting to return home as soon as possible to be reunited with his new-born daughter Sara.
Sara arrived in February, just one week before her father and his partner were set to compete at the 5-Star Fort Lauderdale Major. After a week of cuddles and getting into the swing of fatherhood he left for Florida and then continued on to Qatar.
“Now I am a father this year is totally different for me,” Ontiveros said. “It will be completely different.
“I played the week after she was born, so it is a little bit difficult, but I had one week with her and then went to play in Fort Lauderdale. I can see her more after this week when we have a bit of a break and see her with her eyes open.”
The 4-Star KATARA Beach Volleyball Cup runs from March 6-10, and is taking place at the KATARA Cultural Village. It is the fourth time that Doha has hosted an FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour tournament, following competitions in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Ontiveros and Virgen began the KATARA Beach Volleyball Cup in good form, and enjoyed a 2-0 (21-14, 21-17) over Poland’s Mariusz Prudel and Jakub Szalankiewicz.
The pair have been together for five years and in 2017 they won silver at the Qinzhou 3-Star and bronze at the Olsztyn 4-Star tournaments.
They made their Olympic debuts at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games and while he now has greater priorities, they are already thinking about reaching a second Olympics at Tokyo 2020.
“We’ve been together five years now and it is still going good, so we’re happy,” Ontiveros said. “The past few years there was a lot of pressure because the goal we had was big and put a lot of stress on us.
“We’ll start again with our objective and we know that pressure is part of the game, we know what our goal is and we have to deal with that.
“We will try to reach our objectives again. We’ll see, it might happen, it might not.”